At Last, Dangerous Visions

By Gordon Hopkins Editor’s Note: Okay, I admit it. This essay is pretty self-indulgent and I don’t know how many people are actually going to bother to read it. As is so often the case with me, it started as one thing but, by the end, turned into something completely different. Also, it is way too long. Still, what’s the point of being editor if I can’t indulge myself once in a while? Tsundoku. It is a Japanese word that describes buying more books that one could possibly read in a lifetime. When the list of my sins (assuming there is one, but that's for another day) is compiled, that word will be at the top. Yet, I have never bought a book that I didn't intend to read. Okay, I once bought a signed Lawrence Ferlinghetti book written in Polish. Since I don't plan on learning how to read Polish, I guess I never planned to read that particular book. But that is the exception, not the rule.Yet, despite knowing I'll never be able to finish all the books I already own, I find myself obsessing over the books I can't have. There have been many books lost to time in one fashion or another. Ernest Hemingway's untitled, unpublished World War I springs to mind. In 1922, Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, rode a train from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland, where her husband was on assignment as a correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star, covering a peace conference. Said novel was packed in a suitcase. Hadley left the suitcase unattended to buy a bottle of water and when she returned, it was gone. And you think you were mad when the airline lost your luggage. All you lost were some clothes and that stupid souvenir key chain that you would have lost two weeks after returning home anyway. That's just one. Herman Melville, Jane Austen, Homer, even ole' Billy Shakespeare himself wrote tales that have vanished into the mists of time, never again to be read by the ravenous bibliophile. Then there are the books that were promised but never finished, or never written at all. You can find a book called “Answered Prayers” by Truman Capote, but it is not the Proust-like expose/evisceration of the super-rich elite that was Capote's playground until he exposed his playmates' peccadillos in the only three chapters of that book that exist. Perhaps the most aggravating category of lost books is the book that exists but they won't let me see it. There are at least three largely completed but unpublished books in the ouvre of the late gonzo journalist, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. There is a novel, “Prince Jellyfish.” There is an expose on American gun culture, alternately known as “The Gun Lobby” and “Fear and Loathing at the NRA.” There is also the third volume of the collection of his letters, “The Mutineer.” The good doctor's literary estate is concerned about flooding the market with “new” works all at once, which I understand. Still, I am getting a little impatient.So, there are at least three different categories of “lost” books. And then there is “The Last Dangerous Visions,” which combines element of all three. Okay, this is going to require a little bit of backstory.An anthology is a book containing stories by multiple authors, as opposed to a collection, with is multiple stories by the same author. I get genuinely annoyed when people mix those terms up. Science fiction and fantasy naturally lends itself to the anthology format. People who read that sort of weirdness (like myself) love to encounter different worlds created by different minds.Anthologies have been around for pretty such as long as books have been a thing. Prior to the sixties, most SFF (the shorthand I intend to use for science fiction and fantasy because I am not writing out science fiction and fantasy over and over) anthologies tended to be made up of stories previously published in the SFF magazines of the day, with names like Amazing Stories and Startling Stories and Wonder Stories. Then in 1967, along came a book called “Dangerous Visions.” Unlike those other books, it consisted of 33 stories commissioned specifically for the book. More importantly, the assignment given by the editor was to break taboos. SFF at that moment was pretty staid and had been for a long time. It was the sixties, one of the most politically turbulent eras in this country's history, yet most SFF being published at the time felt like it had been written in the fifties.“Dangerous Visions” changed that. The stories were shocking at the time, and some are still shocking today, with themes of sex and violence and politics and all sorts of things you didn't talk to your parents about at the dinner table. The book helped to usher in what was called the “New Wave.” It is impossible to overstate the impact that “Dangerous Visions” had one SFF publishing. The man who made the book happen was the editor, Harlan Ellison. Ellison generally hated being called a science fiction writer. True, he wrote science fiction and, technically, that made him a science fiction writer. Still, by that logic, he should also have been called a fantasy writer, horror writer, mystery and crime fiction writer, western writer, screenwriter, essayist, journalist, columnist and a lot of other categories. Yet, science fiction is the genre he is most associated with and the impact “Dangerous Visions” had on the genre has a lot to do with that.If you are not familiar with Harlan Ellison or “Dangerous Visions,” by this time you are probably asking, what has any of this got to do with lost books? Be patient. I'm getting there. The book was so hugely successful that a sequel was inevitable. “Again, Dangerous Visions” came out in 1972. It was announced that a third volume, “The Last Dangerous Visions” would be published in 1973.It wasn't. At one point, Ellison had acquired more than a hundred stories for that projected third volume. In 1973, it was announced that “The Last Dangerous Visions” would be published in three volumes.It wasn't. “The Last Dangerous Visions” became a legend. The tome's failure to appear spanned decades. Many of the writers who contributed stories died without seeing publication. Over the years, Ellison would announce that publication was imminent.It wasn't. This made a lot of folks very angry and a lot of folks very sad. Many of the writers whose tales were slated to appear in the book withdrew their stories. A lot of vitriolic essays were written about the book's non-appearance. Ellison, himself, described it as “a millstone around my neck.”Then, on June 28, 2018, Ellison died at the age of 84. The pitiful, long-term memory of the modern world is notorious, or would be if anyone could remember that far back. As happens with so many writers when they are no longer producing on a regular basis, Harlan Ellison's contributions to literature seem to be rapidly fading from the public consciousness.It is a fate Ellison, himself, famously feared and wrote about.One close friend of Ellison, Jason Davis, heroically fought to keep Ellison's memory alive by reprinting many of his books and as well as bringing out new books, consisting mostly of uncollected stories, essays and other obscure ephemera. Unfortunately, those seemed to attract primarily the already converted Harlanphile. Then, the executor of Ellison's literary estate, J. Michael Straczynski of “Babylon Five” fame, finally completed and published “The Last Dangerous Visions.”The book showed up in my mailbox this week. The real importance of “The Last Dangerous Visions” is not as the final volume of a long-incomplete trilogy. Instead, the true significance in the explanation, finally, of why Harlan Ellison could not complete his dream project. This is not a book review, as I haven't had time to read the full volume. I have, however, read Straczynski's “Ellison Exegesis,” which absolutely was not what I expected. I won't bother to recount the emotional, psychological and, eventually, physical hurdles that made the book an Everest ultimately impossible to ascend. I will only say that, to a certain extent, it resonates with me. I won't claim anything like parity. I'll just say, it resonates. I started with this newspaper in 2016. It allowed me to do what I always wanted to do, which is write for a living. Early on, I had visions of writing books. I even published a few. But I had dreams of writing better books. Then, things changed. The newspaper got hit with what I will just call a financial catastrophe. Yes, newspapers are hurting, but this was different. This wasn't caused by the decline in adverting revenue or the rise of “fake news” on the internet. This was a nearly mortal wound caused by…well, I won't go into the details because, just don't even get me started. The point is, some staff had to be let go. I was still around but I went from being a columnist and occasional feature writer to writing hard news, being pretty much the only guy here writing hard news.I love the work I do but takes up a lot more time. There were other things, like the death of my mother and financial problems and, like I said, don't get me started. I have so many ideas, so many projects I want to make happen, but the hurdles, even just finding the time, sometimes seem almost insurmountable. Like everyone ever born, not just Harlan Ellison, I expect to die with dreams unfulfilled. But I intend that at least some of them will see the light of day. I've had a book “almost finished” for the last three years.It will finally be coming out next month.

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